Employee Experience

How does a company with 1000 people end up with fewer than 20 Black people or less than 10% women? It’s called “diversity debt” — the idea that if your company consists primarily of a specific type of person by hire number 10, it’s basically impossible to get representation back on track. No one wants to be a DEI hire. When we were recruiting for Chezie, a company with an explicit mission to build more diverse and equitable workplaces, we knew we couldn’t fall into this trap. We had to figure out how to promote fair recruiting practices from day 1. Here’s what we did: 1. Encouraged all to apply: We know long lists of requirements can scare people off, so we made sure to include a note encouraging candidates to apply, even if they didn’t check every box (pictured below!). More and more companies are doing this these days, which we love to see. 2. Posted clear compensation ranges: Transparency is huge for us, so we shared salary and equity details upfront in every job posting. This keeps us accountable and helps us avoid perpetuating pay gaps. 3. Standardized the application process: Every candidate went through the same @Airtable form with screener questions, which made sure we evaluated based on qualifications, not biases. 4. Sourced diverse candidates: We intentionally reached out to underrepresented communities. For example, we used Wellfound’s diversity feature filter to invite people directly to apply. 5. Accommodations-Ready: Before interviews, we asked candidates if they needed any accommodations because everyone should feel comfortable and supported during the process. You can hire for merit and make your process more inclusive at the same time. I promise. As the founder ecosystem becomes more diverse, I think more founders will prioritize building teams the right way. For any founders hiring or who’ve recently hired, what did you do to build equity into the process? #recruiting #startups

What If HR had a Product Manager? Lately, I’ve been asking myself a question that won’t leave me alone: What if HR worked the way great product teams work? Think about it. Every company obsesses over how to design, ship, and improve products customers love. They map journeys, run sprints, collect feedback, prioritize fixes. Why wouldn’t we apply the same discipline to the experience of our employees? Because let’s be honest, most People teams aren’t running one simple process. We’re managing complex systems: Onboarding touches IT, Ops, HR, and the hiring manager. Performance reviews look different in every business unit. Culture? It gets scattered into side projects and all-hands slides. And when the systems stay siloed, so does the impact. Which brings me back to the question: Why don’t we assign a Product Manager to HR? Not to write user stories for the sake of jargon, but to think differently about what we build. What would change if someone owned the employee experience as a product? Someone who: -Maps the full employee journey, from their first hello to their last day. -Connects tools like Workday, Lattice, Notion into real workflows. -Builds feedback loops so changes aren’t guesswork. -Prioritizes improvements instead of just adding “one more policy.” In other words, treats the organization like a product - not just a support function. Imagine designing HR with the same rigor as a world-class product team: Would onboarding feel less like a scavenger hunt? Would performance management finally work because it’s designed for how people actually work? Would culture stop being a set of slogans and start being an operating system? Here’s the bigger question I’m sitting with: If we know how to design frictionless customer experiences, why are we still okay with clunky employee experiences? We already know the answers matter. Because when people feel lost in process, when they don’t trust the system, when everything feels like “admin”, they disengage. And disengagement kills productivity faster than any bad quarter ever will. So maybe the question isn’t: Should HR have a Product Manager? Maybe it’s: Why haven’t we done this already? If you’re an HR leader or an operator, I’d love your perspective: Where does your People stack feel disconnected right now? If you had a People PM tomorrow, what would you hand them first? Because the way I see it, what got us here, won’t get us there. It’s time to trash the old playbook and build HR like the product it deserves to be.

Most companies frontload onboarding into the first week, then wonder why great hires quit after 2 months. Here's a framework that fixes this: THE 30/60/90 ONBOARDING PLAN Days 0-30: Orientation → Belonging Goal: Make them feel part of something - Welcome kit + preboarding touchpoints - Set clear role expectations and team charter - Buddy system + manager syncs Quick Win: Schedule a values-aligned storytelling session with a company founder Days 31-60: Integration → Clarity Goal: Understand how their work fits - Role-specific training - First project delivery - Cross-functional intros Quick Win: Create a "map of influence" showing who to talk to and when Days 61-90: Acceleration → Impact Goal: Start delivering results - Feedback loop with manager - Career path preview - Culture check-in + stay conversation Quick Win: Ask "What's one thing you'd change about our onboarding?" Why this works: - Week 1 onboarding creates anxiety relief but not engagement. - 30-day onboarding builds belonging but lacks direction. - 90-day onboarding creates clarity, confidence, and measurable impact. Most companies frontload everything into the first few days, then abandon new hires to figure it out. The result? Talented people leave because they never felt integrated or clear on their impact. TAKEAWAY: Your onboarding process is a 90-day audition. Not just for the new hire to prove themselves. For your company to prove it's worth staying. The companies with the best retention don't just hire great people. They systematically integrate them into something they want to be part of.

"The current approach to the employee experience simply doesn’t work." Employee experience often gets treated as a comp exercise, fixes to onboarding, maybe a revised perf process -- often built "one size fits all." Companies invest heavily in customer experience. Research, data science, human-centered design and product management creates massive results through personalization, loyalty and deep understanding of emotional drivers. What if we applied a lot of the same tools to employee experience? What if we thought of employee experience through the lens of product management? Great #EX boosts retention and drives great #CX. Visibly in retail: Trader Joe's and Costco have excellent EX, strong financials and very loyal customers. This movement is growing. It will get larger because the demographics of labor are changing: slow growth, more diversity, tradeoffs well beyond comp and benes. Here's some faves, 🔗 in comments: follow them all if you don't already! ⭐ Samantha Gadd and Kalyn (KP) Ponti have been leading with their EX Manifesto and focus on human-centered design. How to work directly with employees to understand needs, and build together. Which leads to... ⭐ The top quote from "Reimagining Work as a #Product" by Dart Lindsley & Eric Anicich brings product design thinking to life with stories from Eli Lilly, Shopify and Dropbox where the Melanie / Alastair / Allison trifecta are re-imagining #EX. They share a framework that breaks down a job into tasks, understanding what's rewarding vs drudgery. Work that ... ⭐ Debbie Lovich & Rosie Sargeant quantified: increasing joy boosts retention by almost 2X, and that you can't make assumptions about what brings someone joy: a break where you write notes might be joyful. Debbie and I just talked about how Clay Christensen's "Jobs to Be Done" (JTBD) framework applies to employees. Why the job someone takes often has less to do with comp and title than a broader set of tradeoffs. "JTBD" shows in Dart & Eric's work, and is central to... ⭐  Ethan Bernstein, Michael Horn & Bob Moesta's "What Companies Get Wrong About Employee Experience" which breaks down four typical quests of people taking on a new role -- what are they "hiring" that role to do? Understanding the emotional context of leaving or taking a new job and the desires and tradeoffs of individuals boosts outcomes -- especially retention. Emotional context also shows up in #AI adoption... ⭐ Christina Janzer & Lucas Puente's work on AI personas, which I recently shared -- how might those personas overlap with someone's "JTBD" of their role? ⭐ Rodney Evans knows this is a major transformation, and one group who needs help changing how they work is #HR. Rodney and team do work with people who want to do the work... Which leads to one last quote: ⭐ "Let the work do the work" Iain Roberts, taking a design-centered approach to improving EX by working on it directly with the team. Who am I missing? #FutureOfWork #retention

We all say “customer first.” And yes, that always matters. But let me ask you this: Who actually experiences your brand before anyone else does? Your employees. Think about it. They’re the first ones to – - Test your systems. - Experience your culture. - Integrate your processes.  - Spot the gaps between your mission and your reality. So, if your employees don’t believe your story – why would your customers? I learned this early at Rubans Accessories. We stopped treating “employee engagement” like an HR checklist... Instead, started treating them, like the early adopters of the brand. When your employees are your biggest fans, your customers feel more drawn to your story. Think about it like a product launch: → Your sales team is testing your value prop every time they pitch. → Your customer care team feels the emotional gap between your promise and delivery. → Your warehouse staff understands speed and scale better than any consultant ever will. In fact, research shows brands with strong employee experience outperform competitors by 147% in earnings per share (Source: Gallup.) The math is simple: Happy employees → Happy customers → Loved brand. Your employees are not just building your brand. They’re living it – every single day. Treat them as your first customers, and the marketplace will simply follow.

EX breaks when it “lives in HR.” It works when the entire system owns it. Many organizations talk about employee experience as if it’s a program, a perk, or a function. But employee experience is a network of decisions — hundreds made every week by leaders at every level, and by employees themselves. A Board sets the standards and funds the trade-offs. A CHRO architects the operating system: the data, cadence, guardrails, and design. Business leaders allocate resources, shape role mix, and remove blockers. People leaders create the weekly reality: clarity, feedback, recognition, and team rituals. And employees play their part by meeting commitments, engaging in the process, and providing signal-rich feedback. That’s the real chain of ownership. Across the book, I highlight five core mechanisms that shape experience and performance: Hiring & Onboarding, Performance Systems, Rewards & Recognition, Work Design & Cadence, and Tools & AI Guardrails. These aren’t “programs”—they are the structural levers through which culture, clarity, and accountability show up day-to-day. If a lever has no owner, it has no impact. If too many owners touch the same lever, it becomes noise. Use this map with your team: Write the name of the true owner for each lever. Then set one 90-day target per lever. You’ll instantly see where clarity exists — and where the system is breaking down. Employee experience isn’t an initiative. It’s an operating model.

𝐏𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐲. I recently had a conversation with a senior HR leader about why employees leave organizations. I expected the usual answer, "Better salary." Instead, he said, "Money is usually the reason people mention. Daily experience is the reason they remember." That single sentence explains why so many organizations struggle with retention. Salary pays employees for their work. Culture determines how much of themselves they're willing to bring to work. One appears in a bank account. The other appears in every meeting, every conversation, every decision, and every interaction throughout the day. Employees don't evaluate a workplace only on payday. They evaluate it when their ideas are heard, when mistakes become learning opportunities instead of blame, when managers invest in their growth, and when respect is shown consistently, not only when performance is exceptional. I've seen organizations offering industry-leading salaries while losing exceptional talent. I've also seen companies with fewer resources build remarkably loyal teams because employees felt trusted, challenged, appreciated, and confident that tomorrow offered more opportunities than yesterday. Compensation is remembered once a month. Culture is experienced every day. The culture employees experience is rarely the one described during recruitment. It's the one leaders demonstrate on an ordinary Wednesday when nobody is celebrating anything. A healthy culture isn't an employee benefit. It's a business advantage. It strengthens retention, attracts stronger talent, and creates an environment where people consistently perform at their best. Employees don't stay because changing jobs is difficult. They stay because leaving would mean giving up something valuable. 𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐲𝐞𝐞𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐣𝐨𝐛 𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐰, 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞? LinkedIn LinkedIn News India #Leadership #WorkplaceCulture #ThoughtLeadership #FutureOfWork #LinkedinNews

Are you applying product thinking to how you design people experiences? Then may I add some ingredients to what you’re cooking up. Because while product thinking is powering up PX, transformational experiences need a bit more than that. From spending the last decade working with teams in this space, I’ve boiled it down to three key ingredients (which is tough, because this space is complex, messy and beautiful, but here we go): 🛠 Product thinking 🎭 Service design skills 🤝 Facilitation = Experiences that deliver results, for your people and business. If you’re thinking, “WTF do those words mean?” - fair. PX can be a jargon-fuelled frenzy. So, I mapped it out (and not just so I can finally explain my job to my pals). Here's how these ingredients come to life using the double-diamond framework as a familiar structure to get us started: 🛠 Product thinking: A structured, actionable and measurable way to test, iterate & improve people experiences. 🎭 Service design: Aligning the front stage customer AND employee experiences with the backstage systems, process and tech that make it viable. 🤝 Facilitation: PX doesn’t work in a vacuum, often it's a teams confidence in the application and advocacy that means PX initiatives can wobble. Bringing the right people along for the ride through curated conversations, safe spaces, and feedback loops build confidence and buy-in. But great PX design isn’t just about how. It’s about who and why. 👑 Leadership: They set the tone, make the hard calls, and need to be in the journey, not just (begrudgingly) signing off budget. 🫶 Engagement: People don't resist change, they resist being changed without involvement. Build understanding and capabilities beyond your people team (come-on, they've got enough on their plates) Cross-functional collaboration, specialised squads, show and tells and feedback loops are key. 🎯 Purpose & mission: Keep the goalposts clear while allowing creativity and play in execution. If people don't know why something matters and how it contributes to the bigger goal, it won't stick. 📏 Values: Your design principles - guardrails that shape experiences unique to your organisation, ensuring your experiences standout from the rest. 🔽 I designed this diagram to show how it all fits together. But don’t be daunted - PX isn’t about doing everything at once. It’s about knowing where you're at, what your people and business need, and applying the right tools at the right pace, then test, review and adapt to set up your style. So, PX friends, what do we think? Natalie Pearce, Megan Trotter, Luke O'Mahoney, Jessica Z., Mark Lewis, Marie Krebs, Matt McFarlane, JooBee Yeow, PhD, Natalie Lineton, Lauren Gomes, Vanessa Monsequeira - चित्रलेखा ---- ⬆️ This is a snapshot into how I work with leaders & people ops teams to design transformational experiences. Want to learn more? Follow along or DM me 💌 #PeopleExperience #DesignThinking #ServiceDesign #ProductThinking

Treating “HR as a Product” changes everything. Your users become employees and candidates. Your features are ways of working. Your bugs are the friction in people’s day-to-day. This approach enables HR to stop shipping policies and start shipping products. For us at Dropbox, that product is the experience of work itself. I had the pleasure of talking about HR as a Product and modern work with the amazing Dart Lindsley for an episode of Work for Humans. In our conversation, we walked through my simple, repeatable HR as a Product (HRaaP) framework: 1️⃣ Discover – Go deep on employee needs: What user problem are we solving?  2️⃣ Build – Prototype new ways of working: core collaboration hours, meeting-free focus days, intentional gatherings, async practices. 3️⃣ Evaluate – Treat everything like a product launch: adoption, engagement, retention, and real productivity signals. 4️⃣ Iterate – Continuously collect feedback to: debug, add features, and enhance scalability. Woven throughout the framework are the mindset shifts that drive this work: 👉 Human-centered → put employees and candidates at the heart of every decision. 👉 Simple is sophisticated → move from fragmented complexity to intuitive simplicity. 👉 Stay curious → maintain an open mind to explore new ideas and challenge assumptions. 👉 Outcomes over outputs → focus on impact vs. checking boxes. 👉 Iterate to innovate → improve through continuous learning to meet evolving needs. That’s how we built #VirtualFirst to be more than just a “remote work policy,” but a designed system where intentionality replaces antiquated norms, and where work is something we build, not something we inherit. Thank you Dart for the engaging conversation and for sharing your industry-leading insights on the future of work. Check it out here! https://lnkd.in/e5hzRuFw

The classic office use case is slowly dying. The traditional notion of the office as merely a place for routine tasks and clocking in hours is even 'deader'. In its place, a new role is emerging—an experience that redefines the workplace as a dynamic, engaging environment where every visit is purposeful and enriching. Hybrid work models are becoming the norm, blending remote and in-person collaboration. This shift demands a reimagining of workplace experiences to make every office visit meaningful and worth the commute. Employees now seek more than just a desk; they desire spaces that inspire, engage, and foster a sense of community. In response, many companies are attempting to right-size their offices—optimizing space to reflect new work patterns and reducing underutilized areas. This strategic downsizing allows organizations to reinvest in better workplace experiences, creating environments that attract employees back to the office by offering unique benefits not found at home. Corporate real estate is being disrupted by this evolution, moving beyond simply providing physical spaces to crafting vibrant, people-focused environments. The office is transforming into a hub of collaboration, innovation, and culture-building—offering experiences that fully remote work cannot replicate. This flight to experience is about creating workplaces that employees are excited to be a part of...sometimes. To make hybrid work truly work, companies must integrate flexible spaces, unparalleled services, and sustainable practices. Hospitality-led solutions—such as gourmet food options featuring locally sourced ingredients, artisanal coffee experiences, and orgnizational/community engagement events — elevate the workplace. Seamless meeting management ensures that every gathering is impactful, with state-of-the-art audio-visual support, tailored catering, and efficient logistics. By recognizing that the traditional office model is fading and embracing the flight to experience, organizations can enhance employee satisfaction, attract top talent, and drive success in an ever-evolving work landscape. Right-sizing offices and reinvesting in superior workplace experiences are key strategies in this transformation. The future office is not just a place to work; it's a place to connect, collaborate, and create—making hybrid work truly effective and every office visit valuable. #FutureOfWork